Education Bill

I shall keep my contribution extremely brief. I speak as a former chair of governors at a special school for the deaf—one of the only remaining sign bilingual schools in the country. The issue that I particularly want to address is school discipline. That is so central to the learning environment and to outcomes that it is a great shame that it has not been dealt with by previous Administrations. It is for that reason, if for no other, that the Bill will receive my full support. As anyone who chaired a governing body under the previous law knows, the difficulty with the regime that existed was that when a head teacher excluded a pupil the exclusion was often overturned by the governing body, because it knew that if it did not overturn it, the exclusion would subsequently be overturned by the extensive appeal mechanisms that are amended by the Bill. It is for that reason that I welcome the amendments that the Government are introducing in that respect.